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Cider Made Slowly.

“He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face
being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as cornflowers,
his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands
clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled
with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere
of cider which at its first return each season has such an
indescribable fascination for those who have been
born and bred among the orchards.”

- THOMAS HARDY, THE WOODLANDERS -

“He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face
being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as cornflowers,
his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands
clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled
with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere
of cider which at its first return each season has such an
indescribable fascination for those who have been
born and bred among the orchards.”

- THOMAS HARDY, THE WOODLANDERS -

THIS IS
MIKE.

A few years ago after exactly 25 years working in the City of London, he had a light bulb moment, and realised the following things in the following order:

“Insuring oil rigs, refineries and super tankers is really, really boring. Unless they blow up. But if they do that, I get into big, big trouble. I don’t want to do this anymore…

I love making and drinking cider and I reckon that the stuff I make is good enough to sell.

Right, that’ll be it then. That’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to be a cidermaker!”

And he did.

So with no business plan, only a vague idea of how to scale up from making a couple of hundred bottles a year to being a big grown up cider mill, and a bank manager that just couldn’t stand to see a grown man cry, Pearson’s Cider Co. was born.

They moved into the cider mill in Lower Lemington in the Spring of 2013, and since then have gone on to win a string of awards and are now widely regarded as one of the best cidermakers in the country.

When he’s not pressing apples you’ll find Mike wandering around the Cotswolds seeking out new places to sell his cider or looking for new cider apple orchards.